Hell found me.  I was standing on a bridge when he did, leaning over the rail and dropping spitballs into the turbid water some fifty feet below.

“I've been looking all over for you,”  he said.

“I'm not exactly hiding.”   I launched another spitball and watched it plummet.   I could almost hear the impossibly tiny splash.

“You try harder than you care to admit, I think.  Why are you here?”

That was a cheap shot, but I refused to give him satisfaction, and my defiance startled me.  “Where else would I be?”

“Well, I was hoping you'd be with me.”  I could see the sparkle of laughter in his eyes and hated him for it.

“You really can't resist those little digs, can you,”  I snapped.  “You just have to to keep twisting the knife.”  His face went rigid before he turned his gaze out to the water, and I thought I had scored a hit, until I noticed the pedestrians passing behind us. 

Two young men, classic twenty-somethings with that casual air of calculated indifference reserved exclusively for inexperienced youth, looked at me curiously, probably wondering if I was going to jump.  I straightened a little and smiled.  No sense in advertising.  The taller of the pair smiled back as they passed, a brilliant gleam in the near darkness, and I felt something lurch in my chest.  When they were out of earshot, my erstwhile companion spoke.

“It was a pity grin, you know.”

“Jealous much?”  I asked, wondering at the source of my sudden disgust with this guy.

“Hardly.”  His feigned nonchalance was marred by the shift in his eyes.  “I've had you far too long to be threatened by the likes of him.”  He gestured with his chin toward the two men who were already at the foot of the bridge.  The taller one turned my way for a moment before jogging to catch up with his companion.  I could still see his smile, and I didn't particularly care if it might be only in my mind's eye.

“But you never owned me, and that just yanks your chain, doesn't it.”  I glared, triumphant in my pettiness, finding his weak spot and digging in just as he had done to me so many times in the past.  “You just hate the fact that even now I have a choice, don't you.”
He opened his mouth to retort but I cut him off.  “Oh, don't bother.  We both know whatever you'll say will be a lie.  It's what you do best.”

A truck rumbled across the bridge behind us, and I felt the entire structure shake with its' passage.

“Yes, it is,” he replied, back on solid ground, and  I was a fool to have given it to him.  “But consider this, Beautiful:  I've never needed to own you.  Not when you've been mine from the beginning.”  He touched my face and I shrank back.  His fingers felt warm and inviting, and that too was a lie.

“I don't care.”  The words were hardly more than a whisper, even to me, but he heard them nonetheless.

“Now who's lying?”

I didn't answer.  Instead, I leaned out over the rail and dropped another spitball down into the murky depths.  Instead of the splash, I imagined the sound of soft, gentle laughter.

“Are you ready to come home with me, now?”

I hesitated. 

I had put myself in the middle of this bridge so he could find me, and now that he had, I was reluctant to take the plunge and go with him.  I turned to look at his saturnine face, saw him scowl over my shoulder, and looked in the direction of his gaze.

“What?  What is it?”  All I could see was a car coming across the bridge.

“It's nothing.  Never mind.”  His warm, lying fingers turned my face to his.
I could hear music as the car passed, its radio cranked up to full volume.  The driver grinned at me through the open window, and I pulled away, unaccountably repelled by my companions' touch.

“Don't do that,” I muttered, scrubbing at my cheek with the back of my hand.

“You used to embrace me willingly.”  His tone held a hint of sadness as his eyes dropped from mine to stare out over the inky water.  “Have we grown apart so soon?”

I almost reached for him.  Almost.  Just an hour ago I wanted him to fold me into his arms and stroke my hair with his long fingered, perfectly manicured hands, but a bright gleam in the darkness and the sound of music made me realize a fundamental truth.

“Were we ever really together?”

“I thought so,” he admitted. “I thought I would find you here and we'd go home.  I thought you'd be with me forever.”

I turned away so he couldn't see me shudder at that last word.  Forever was such a long time.  At the far end of the bridge, I could see another pedestrian approach.  He walked slowly, head down, and I berated myself for looking, for wanting to see a smile, gleaming in the darkness.

“I wanted to go with you,” I admitted, turning away from the lone figure and back to my companion.  “I thought I did, at least.  Now I am not so sure.”

“It's because of him, isn't it.  Your pity grin.”  There was no pain in his voice, just a kind of cold recognition.

“Maybe. No.  I don't know.”

“Liar,” he said, his tone mocking.  “Do you think I can't see it?”

The lone figure, just another stranger after all, passed behind us easily.  The pedestrian walkway was more than wide enough.  He stopped about thirty feet beyond where we stood and leaned out over the rail.

I shrugged.  “I don't think it matters any more.  Do you?”

“No.”  The word was a snarl.  “There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”  He nodded toward the figure, who was dropping his own spitballs over the rail.  “Even him.”

Him?  I felt a stab of jealousy, brisk and sudden, and oddly muted, like ripping a bandage from a mostly healed wound.  My companion turned to look at the guy on the rail, and I saw something I once identified as lust skate across his familiar, lying face, only now I knew its' true name was avarice.

I smiled, suddenly happy for the first time since what felt like the Dark Ages.  “Thank you.”

“For what?”  He seemed genuinely confused.  It was an emotion I had never seen in him before.

“For being true to your own nature, and for letting me see it.”  I could feel warmth spreading through me, like sunshine on the horizon of a new day.

“You aren't making any sense.”

“Probably not,” I agreed.  “But I am making a choice, and that's all that matters.”

I pushed past him, felt him stiffen for a moment, as though he were torn between reaching for me and letting me go.  “Go home,” I said.  “And don't bother waiting for me.” 

When I turned back to look, he was gone.

I walked past the stranger, who was still leaning over the rail.  He glanced up at my approach, and I smiled.  His face faltered, shifting from sorrow to a tentative kind of relief in the space of a few heartbeats.

I reached the end of the bridge, then stopped.  I looked back, and saw the guy step away from the rail.  He saw me looking, and gave a little wave.  I nodded, then continued on.

Hell had found me, but he couldn't hold me.  I walked away, with no more bridges in my future, and the smile on my face was like a gleam in the darkness.